Devin The Dude Started Smoking Weed After Losing A Footrace

The legalization of marijuana is one of the major topics in America today, with Colorado and Washington recently going pro-weed and Alaska readying itself to be the third. So when XXL sought out a rapper who would share their knowledge on the subject, we looked no further than Houston native and noted weed connoisseur, Devin The Dude. Devin, who recently put out his 8th album, One For The Road. He sat down with XXL to discuss his very first time smoking weed. —Emmanuel C.M. (@ECM_LP)

Devin The Dude: "The first time I smoked marijuana, it was the evening and I was in the 6th grade, and we was out playing football. It was right before we was planning to go to the skating rink that night. My friend Boomer—he was a little shorter than me—we was out there playing football. He smoked already; he was 14 at the time, I was 13. He was smoking weed and we was all into sports and I tell him, 'Man, you need to stop that, that’s going to slow you down, you won't be able to run.' He said, 'Run'—while inhaling weed—'Run, I can beat you running, what you talking about?' I was like, 'Man, you smoking too much of that stuff now, what you talking about? You want to play football you better stop smoking that shit or you won't be able to run.' [Boomer says], 'I can beat you right now.'

"He still had the joint in his hand. My brother went down 50 yards with his hands up. I’m like, c’mon man, let's go. We get down. 'On your mark, get set, go.' Boom, we took off. I got the jump on him like it was nothing. Next thing I know I saw him, a little dude with smoke coming out [his mouth] and passing me and beat me. I finished, [and] soon as I caught my breath, I said, 'Let me hit that,' and I hit the weed for the first time.

"It didn’t really hit me that much. But that night, we was planning to go to the skating rink. Had some joints. I put a joint on my head and a hat on. So I was in the house, getting ready to go to the skating rink. My mom was getting ready to go out, too. She was in the bathroom, looking in the mirror combing her hair, I was trying to get her to leave. I don’t know what made me take my hat off and tell her, 'Hey mom, lemme see your comb.' I took the hat off and got the comb from her and she looked in the mirror and saw the joint on my head. I tried to shake it off but I couldn’t shake it off. She said, 'What is that?' and grabbed a patch of my hair with the joint and threw it in the toilet and chewed me out. But she still let me go the skating rink that day."